The modern age may best be characterized by the overwhelming amount of information transmitted between individuals for personal and business purposes alike. An increasing number of individuals and entities communicate increasingly frequently, exchange increasingly more data, by an increasing number of means.
It is typically important to both the business providing a service to a customer, and to the customer receiving a service from a business that a dependable and convenient communication link exist between them. Customers place a high value on receiving the products and services they have purchased from a business at the price and under the terms to which they have agreed, and businesses depend on satisfied customers to ensure their viability in a competitive market. To achieve these ends, communication between customers and businesses is paramount. Customers and business representatives must talk or correspond in writing to provide and receive information about products and services, provide and receive price quotes, negotiate and sign service agreements and resolve problems which may arise.
The typical contemporary business has kept pace with the technological advances in the field of communications which have increased and diversified the methods by which customers and businesses may communicate. This is demonstrated in FIG. 1, which shows an exemplary contemporary business card 10 for Busy Business Inc., an exemplary contemporary business. As shown in FIG. 1, the contact details 12 on business card 10 include a mailing address 14 for postal deliveries, a telephone number 16 for telephone calls, a fax number 18 for fax transmissions, an SMS number 20 for receiving text messages, an email address 22 for email transmissions, and a website address 24 for Internet access.
Both businesses and customers can benefit from the convenience afforded by the quantity and variety of communications options. For example, a customer having a busy day may find that he has missed the opportunity to call his service provider during regular business hours, but the options of contacting the business outside of office hours by fax or email remain available to him.
Ironically, as evidenced by the quantity of details shown on business card 10, it is the very increase and diversification of communication options which has itself created a communications impediment. The contemporary individual is typically overwhelmed with contact details, the majority of which he cannot hope to remember. He must be equipped at the very least with an address book, or preferably, with an electronic organizer. Keeping up with ever-increasing contact details, due to the advances of communications technology, and ever-changing contact details, due to physical relocations, area-code changes, communications service provider switches, etc. has graduated from a minor inconvenience to a more bothersome aggravation. The contemporary experience of writing a quick business email in the middle of the night which will be at its destination at the start of the next business day is a welcome one and a modern convenience. However, both unwelcome and inconvenient to a similar degree, is the “b as in boy”, “d as in dog” recitation required to provide an email address over the phone accurately.
Businesses in particular cannot afford to lose touch with their customers, and historically, in recognizing that it has been in their best interest to make it easier for customers to reach them, businesses have invested considerable efforts in minimizing the cost in both time and money for customers to reach them. These efforts have included business reply mail, which saves customers the cost of a stamp when communicating with the business and toll free numbers, which save customers the cost of a telephone call when calling the business. Businesses have also used toll free numbers with the name of the business spelling out the phone number using the alphanumeric keypad to help customers easily retain and retrieve their contact information. Telephone numbers have been set to jingles and seared into our memories by constant repetition on the public airwaves. However, in the modern context, these solutions are only partial due to the increased number of the means of communication and contact details.